


Everyone Needs a Confessor

by kyrieanne



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:33:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/651024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrieanne/pseuds/kyrieanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzie decides she wants to be friends with William Darcy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Needs a Confessor

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Takes place during the events of Episode 80 & 81.

“Everyone needs a confessor.” 

This is how Dr. Gardner opens the first class Lizzie Bennet ever takes from her. 

It is her second semester of college and Lizzie really isn’t sure how she even ends up in Dr. Gardner’s seminar on Cross-Media storytelling. 

The class is in the communications building across campus. It is new with a two-story atrium and screens on every wall. It gleams metal and stone and glass. When Dr. Gardner says her thing about confessors Lizzie is staring at the steel support beam that cuts across the ceiling of the classroom. Her head is arched back until it puts a crick in her neck. She can see her reflection in the beam; her face balloons to an unnatural state. 

Lizzie doesn’t like the communications building; she prefers the English department, hidden in a wing of the library where the smell of dust and books permeates her clothes. After she spends the day there all she has to do is lift the cuff of her shirt to her nose and inhale and she is comforted. It is Lizzie’s favorite kind of place, the ones that worn and safe. 

This classroom is shiny with too much glass and fancy equipment. It is the wrong place to tell stories. 

“Everyone needs a confessor because human nature is to reflect. We see this going back to mythological stories and religious literature where characters pray to gods,” Dr. Gardner walks as she talks. Her heels click on the floor. 

Lizzie contorts her mouth so she looks like a bug in the beam’s reflection. She wonders if she should grow her hair out. Dr. Gardner doesn’t stop talking, but she does pass by Lizzie’s desk and touches the girl’s elbow. It is slight and no one would have noticed except Lizzie jumps about three feet in the air. It knocks her notebook to the ground and her pen rolls off onto the floor and disappears. 

“Later we see the confession in the rise of the theater,” Dr. Gardner doesn’t stop her lecture, “Shakespeare has his characters soliloquize effectually making their audience god-like in their ability to know the internal workings of a character’s mind.” 

Lizzie scrambles to pick up her notebook and cringes when she realizes that her pen has disappeared. She wants to sink down through the shiny stone floors of this stupid building, but instead she covertly pats her back pack but - shit - she doesn’t have an extra pen. She really is ready to get up and walk out of the class even though now Dr. Gardner is talking about the development of the novel and psychological consciousness which really does sound interesting. But the woman probably hates her now and Lizzie doesn’t do well with authority figures hating her. She likes to be liked. She isn’t a people pleaser, but she enjoys affirmation and no where does Lizzie get more affirmation than in school. Seriously, why the hell didn’t she stay in the English department? 

And then over her right shoulder someone hands her a pen. Her head whips around and it is a boy. His mouth quirks up and Lizzie can feel her whole body blush starting in the back of her neck. 

“This is the central question,” Dr. Gardner passes by Lizzie’s desk again, “who is the confessor? As our stories increasingly find ways to be told across new mediums we have to go back to the human desire to be known.” 

(Lizzie wishes she could say she remembers this speech word for word because it turns out to be imperative to what happens to her later, but she doesn’t. At that moment she is thinking more about the boy who passed her a pen. She’ll find out after class that his name is Sean. They will get coffee and later make out in her dorm room. He’ll be charming and they will date for a year - a glorious year where Lizzie actually thinks she will be the first to join her mother’s 2.5 WPF club - until she breaks up with him. It will happen when she gets word she has been accepted to spend the summer in London working on Dr. Gardner’s research project about pre-Shakespearean theater. When she tells him about it he will get red faced and say, “What the hell am I supposed to do while you’re gone?” Lizzie dumps him right there and learns the lesson that real love isn’t selfish.) 

Over the next three years Lizzie will take every class Dr. Gardner will teach and she hears the confessor speech a dozen more times. But Lizzie will always regret not paying attention the first time, not fixing that moment in her mind. She imagines it though. In her imagination, Dr. Gardner stopped in the middle of the room, lifted a palm toward the class and said, “Enough with the preamble. Let’s begin. Let’s get started telling stories.” 

*** 

“Whydidn'tyoutellBingaboutmyvideos?” 

It tumbles out and Lizzie really isn’t sure what she is saying or if she dares to even say it. But that was the point, right? To have the conversation they would never normally have? She can practically hear Dr. Gardner in the back of her mind lecturing about levels of consciousness and the objectivity of truth. It occurs to Lizzie that through these videos she has become a character in her own life. She writes scripts for costume theater and edits her own conversations. 

But now with Darcy smirking at her in his dumb Newsie hat and bow tie (a real one versus the clip on one she uses, of course) Lizzie swallows and lets herself stop being a character. For some strange reason the flannel shirt feels like a super hero cape. In it she can be anyone she chooses. She can even be herself. 

As he talks Lizzie can’t help but notice the line of his jaw and his Adam’s apple tighten when he says, “Would you want your best friend to see you confess to meddling in his affairs?” 

And because this isn’t really her, Lizzie lets herself say whatever leaps forward, “I think he knows you meddle in his affairs.” 

Darcy looks uncomfortable, “Perhaps,” and Lizzie realizes he feels shamed. The shame doesn’t come from her censure but because he agrees with her. He takes her opinion of him seriously. And normally this would send her mind whirling in a thousand directions, but costume!Lizzie isn’t distracted. She rolls forward because talking to costume!Darcy feels oddly natural. 

Then he suggests that it doesn’t matter. That if Bing had felt stronger he wouldn’t have been so easily parted from Jane. 

“Isn’t finding happiness hard enough?” she counters, “who are you and I to test the strength of their relationship?” 

It feels like an admission. Finding happiness was hard enough. Why did it have to be complicated by other people’s interference? 

He asks her about Jane’s feelings and because she is costume!Lizzie she is honest. She doesn’t know. The truth is Jane is in L.A. and Lizzie has no clue what her sister is thinking. They were never good at relating when separated by distance. Darcy suggests maybe further meddling would only cause more pain and costume!Lizzie stares forward because she kind of agrees with him. 

And when she asks him about Bing he takes off the damn hat and it breaks some sort of spell in her. She feels the creep of blush up her neck and she is suddenly, painfully uncomfortable. Why couldn’t he keep the damn hat on when he said that? 

“Maybe you should ask him.” 

His voice drops even lower when he says it and he doesn’t bother to enunciate. That is something Lizzie always noticed about Darcy. He enunciated his words so they came out crisp and clear. You could never miss what he said (only what he meant), but now the edges of his consonants blur. 

“How was that?” 

“Yes. Thank you. Very helpful.” 

“Oh. Good. Um, is there anything else?” 

“No. I know you’re busy.” 

“Very well.” 

*** 

“Lizzie you’re going to have to address the analytics in your report,” Charlotte calls her after Lizzie posts the costume theater video. It is in the middle of the day and Lizzie rolls her desk chair across the carpet to slam her office door shut. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The uptick in her voice gives her away. 

“For every video that William Darcy appears in the analytics are through the roof. You can’t turn in the data for your thesis without addressing the giant digital elephant in the room.” 

“And that is?” 

“That for the audience the most compelling part of these diaries are you and Darcy.” 

Lizzie closes her eyes and spins in her desk chair. She tucks her feet under and it spins faster. 

“Lizzie, stop spinning the chair,” Charlotte says after a half-minute of silence. 

“How’d you know I was doing that?” 

“We’re best friends. You fidget when you’re uncomfortable.”

Lizzie tucks the phone under her chin and pulls herself up to her computer. She searches for her own video diaries and calls up the comments on the latest video. Good lord, people had opinions. Sometime after the third or fourth video Lizzie had turned the analytics and social media over to Charlotte. It was too much to read tweets and comments about her own life. Too meta even for her and she has a video blog. 

“Don’t people have lives?” Lizzie sputters, “I mean I think the most compelling part of the videos is my relationship with my sisters. My mother’s insane marriage plots juxtapose traditional expectations for women in a post modern world. Why aren’t people interested in that?” 

“Stop hiding behind academic mumbo jumbo.” 

“I thought it sounded good.” 

“I’m saying you are going to have to be honest with yourself. Normally that honesty doesn’t belong in a thesis, but you chose to write yours about your own video blog. It’s going to require some soul searching.” 

Lizzie bites down on her lip and looks at the freeze frame expression on her digital face. It is caught at the moment before she turned off the camera just after Darcy left her office. She looks confused and blindsided and a million other things she can’t put into words. 

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Lizzie tells Charlotte. 

*** 

There is the episode with Bing and then the one with Gigi and Bing. That one is so awkward Lizzie can’t even think of a better title for it. And at the end of that episode her expression is the same as after Darcy took off that damn hat. Bing asks her about the videos and she is literally…without words. She feels shame and sadness and anger. She doesn’t even know toward whom. She just wants to sink through the floor. 

***

“WhydidyoutellBingaboutthevideos?” 

She says it in a rush, after hours, when she can storm straight into his office. 

Darcy stands like he always does when she walks into a room. She really wishes he wouldn’t do that. It is awkward and annoyingly endearing. 

“You’re wearing your costume theater shirt.” He says on the tail end of her question. There is pause and Lizzie counts one, two, three breaths. He recovers and tucks his chin, “I didn’t tell Bing about the videos. I saw that he asked you though.” 

Lizzie balls her hands around the cuffs of the shirt, “I just sat there,” she says, “I couldn’t even explain and then he just wished me well,” she says in astonishment and looks at Darcy, “Who is that nice?” 

“Bing is.” 

“Jane is that nice too. I am not that nice.” 

“Nice isn’t the only morality.” 

Darcy walks around his desk and stands a few feet from her. Lizzie swallows. She didn’t come here to talk about Bing and she reminds herself that in the shirt she is costume!Lizzie. She can have conversations she would never normally have. 

He is wearing a suit today and Lizzie misses the details - the suspenders and bow tie - when he wears a suit. In a suit he is just another CEO (albeit the white shirt is crisp and somehow attractive on him), but the details make him Darcy.

He stuffs his hands in his pockets, “You’re wearing your costume theater shirt,” he repeats. 

“I…I…I had a favor to ask.” 

“Do you need another partner?” 

“Yeah,” she looks around his office, “no one else is around.” 

He nods wryly, “Seems to happen to us a lot.” 

She rolls her eyes, “Just put on the damn bow tie. I’ll go get the camera set-up.” 

*** 

Here is the thing about growing up in the Bennet house. Lizzie’s mother speaks in labels. Men are rich or poor, handsome or plain, single or not-worth-your-attention. Jane is the pretty one. Lydia is the baby. And Lizzie…well Lizzie is the strange one. She does not fit her mother’s preconceived labels. Here is the other thing about growing up in the Bennet house: no one fights with Lizzie like her mother does. She was always criticizing — 

“How can you just sit there for hours and read?” 

“Sweet heart, that boy was chasing you cause he likes you. Aren’t you a silly thing? Flirt back!” 

“Lizzie, we get that you are smart. No need to use a quarter size word when a nickel sized one will do, that’s what I always say.” 

“You try raising three daughters as different as you, Jane, and Lydia before you criticize my parenting techniques.” 

“Your sister is not slutty. She is lonely. With all your readin’ and writin’ I thought you’d know the difference.” 

— so when Lizzie starts the videos she critiques right back. And after Darcy helps her with costume theater for a second time, Lizzie curls up on the couch in her borrowed house and re-watches her own videos. She gets to the one with Lydia and Ricky Collins. It is Charlotte’s favorite even though Lizzie is still irritated her sister hijacked her videos. 

“The first rule about the videos is that they are Lizzie’s videos,” Lydia says and Lizzie wants so desperately in that moment to call her baby sister. She doesn’t know why except that Lydia is saying something Lizzie needs to hear right now. Wisdom really does come from the mouth of babes. 

She holds her finger over the call button. Lydia is right, they are her videos. She is going to have to live with the fact that Bing has probably seen them. She is going to have to live with the fact that she took advantage of one of the nicest guys she’s ever known and posted him all over the Internet. She opened up his love life to the scrutiny of strangers for the sake of storytelling. 

Just like she’ll have to live with it if her mother ever sees the way Lizzie has turned her into a caricature. The things she said about her mother? All true, but they are her truth. They are her opinions, her confession of a childhood of being misunderstood. 

And of course this makes her think of Darcy. How she misunderstood him from the beginning and today, again, he is unbelievably game to help her. He is willing to put on her caricature of him and participate in her stupid videos. Lizzie takes her thumb off the button. She doesn’t call Lydia because she’s not quite ready to do that. One revelation is enough for today. 

Instead, she texts Gigi and says Yes, I would love a tour of San Francisco with you and your brother.

***

They take her on a cruise of the bay. The three of them lean on the rails of the observation deck and the morning wind whips Lizzie’s hair. It is January, but the Internet said it was supposed to be 65. She had forgone a coat in exchange for her favorite blue sweater, but out on the water the wind is merciless and she tucks her elbows close to her chest. 

“Here,” Darcy says and he drops his blazer across her shoulders. It is corduroy. Where the collar presses against her jaw she inhales. She can’t help it. Darcy smells like pencil shavings. Strangely, it reminds her of the English department back at her undergrad. 

“I…uh…what about you?” 

“I’m fine.” 

Whatever words she has are stuck in her throat. When did Lizzie start losing her voice around Darcy? For no sane reason she wishes she had her plaid shirt and that they could go inside and do costume theater right now. It would be better than this stuttering and silence. When she doesn’t say anything, Darcy tucks his chin and Lizzie realizes Gigi is right. He really does do that when he is nervous. 

“Um, I’m going to go get coffee,” Gigi mumbles and wanders back inside. It turns out she isn’t much of a morning person. 

Lizzie is still stuck on the thought that she loses words around Darcy. She doesn’t like it. She doesn’t like that he makes her nervous or that she still makes him nervous. After the things she said about him he shouldn’t be nervous around her. He should hate her. 

He rubs his hands together and looks out over the water, “It seems like the only time we can have a conversation is under the guise of costume theater.” 

Lizzie follows his gaze, “Is that weird?” 

“A little.” 

She slips her arms through his coat. She likes that the sleeves cover her fingertips. He really is tall.

“I like it though,” she still hasn’t looked at him. They both stare out across the bay back toward the city, “I don’t have anyone here,” she says, “and it is nice to talk to someone.” 

“Gigi would be happy to talk, I’m sure.” 

She looks at him now and wonders maybe if she assumed too much. Maybe he really has been being polite this whole time. She stammers, “Gigi hasn’t met my family. She only knows them through me. All her opinions are my opinions.” 

He looks at her with one eyebrow arched, “And what is wrong sharing your opinions?” 

“I’ve just realized how much they are mine. It would be nice to have someone else’s thoughts on things.” 

He considers this and Lizzie wonders how his thoughts work. He seems to weigh everything so heavily. It isn’t robotic as much as it is careful. Deliberate. 

“What about Charlotte? Collins and Collins isn’t but an hour and a half from here.” 

Lizzie’s laugh is short, “You don’t have to talk to me. It’s fine.” 

His jaw shifts and he leans closer to her. 

“I want to talk to you Lizzie Bennet. I just don’t want to have to pretend to be somebody else to do it.” 

This catches her off guard like the sway of the boat beneath her. She grips the railing.

“What if we only played ourselves?” She frowns, “what if we play ourselves but call it costume theater because in normal circumstances we would never be friends. After the things I said about you -,” 

“-and my vanity and pride-“

“-to the whole Internet and then showed up at your company…” 

She trails off there. She heard what he said even if she talked right over him. He is right. It was both of them. Together they built the gulf between them. She laughs at the thought. The one thing they accomplished together was to hurt one another. 

“In normal circumstances we would never be friends,” she repeats and tucks back a piece of hair that the wind whips across her face.

“But…” 

“ButIthinkIwanttobeyourfriend.” 

He nods and she thinks she might see the barest hint of a smile, “May I ask why?” he asks. 

Because everyone needs a confessor. The words slip into the back of her mind. She remembers what Dr. Gardner said, every person wants to be known. We confess to the people who we want to know us in the truest way. We confess to the people we trust to know us back to us when we’re unsure. 

But Lizzie doesn’t have her flannel shirt. She isn’t costume!Lizzie right now and while that may seem like a technicality it isn’t to her. She wants to be William Darcy’s friend. She knows that. She knows she wants his opinions about her and her life because he doesn’t impress easily. Yet, he is undeniably generous toward her. She thinks…maybe…given time… she could start to trust his opinions. Still, that gulf still exist. Her own hurt is still real. Jane’s heart is still broken. She is still circumspect. She isn’t ready to confess everything to him. 

Lizzie leans against his shoulder, ignores the butterflies in her stomach from the pressure, and looks out over the water, “How about you be my friend and why will figure itself out.” 

He leans back.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I have lots of thoughts on Lizzie & Darcy friendship. I wrote a companion, follow-up story to this called "Confessions of Little Sisters," which is posted here on AO3.


End file.
